


ignipotent

by stag_von_simp



Series: everything will glow for you [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Ferdinand Being a Good Boyfriend, Fluff, Oneshot, requested on tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21528532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stag_von_simp/pseuds/stag_von_simp
Summary: prompt: ignipotent ~ presiding over fireOR: dorothea arnault does not take fools lightly.  ferdinand's pleased to clean up her mess.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Dorothea Arnault
Series: everything will glow for you [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551619
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	ignipotent

ferdinand winds bandages around dorothea’s knuckles himself; after all, she snarled at him for even trying to mention wrangling her to the infirmary, so he’s left with no other choice but bracing her hands himself. his stomach funnels in his chest, churning like a tornado just before it slaps the earth; bruises are blossoming on her knuckles like flowers wrung of color, and there are cuts nipped across her hands.

“why could you not just go to the infirmary?” ferdinand heaves between his locked teeth, ripping another ribbon of gauze from the roll he’d been using and roping it around her wounded knuckles dutifully, even if seeing her at all injured feels like a knife skewering his gut again and again–although the injury is a product of her own folly.

a sigh howls from between dorothea’s own grinding teeth. boiling rage still swirls in her cheeks, and her green eyes are flaring like lightning in a storm that never sleeps. “because manuela would be disappointed in me,” she confesses. her voice is ragged, as if her sigh had scraped away all the resolve still clotted within her. and ferdinand knows–he knows better than anyone–how much resolve that really is.

he tucks the end of the gauze into the glove of it he’d patched onto her hand, finally finished with his work on that hand. his heart splinters his windpipe, it’s lodged in so tightly, and it shudders with such a wrath. not at dorothea, but at this world that seems to be polluting her smile at every chance. he’s enraged at everyone that isn’t dorothea–and it takes quite a lot to anger him at all.

“i haven’t gotten into a fight since…since before i joined the opera,” dorothea confesses as ferdinand paws for her other hand and gets to work plastering on more bandages. this hand is just as battered; vertigo punches through ferdinand’s senses at the sight. goddess, why dorothea of all people? why must she be hurt? “even then, i was just a child. it was little scuffles back then, k-keeping thugs away from me. and now, here i am, throwing punches like some…some animal.”

“you never told me why you began the fight,” ferdinand muses, swabbing his thumbs across the cuts that litter her knuckles gently. thin streams of blood sprawl from the cuts like thin petals. “i cannot defend your honor until i know. and you should be prepared to see me knock that dastard into the next century the second you divulge what he did to you. but–”

“yes, yes, i know. i have to be innocent. the fight had to be honorable, or whatever,” dorothea grumbles. “but it wasn’t, ferdie. the other guy wasn’t honorable. i wasn’t honorable. it isn’t so black and white as you see it.”

“allow me to be the judge of that,” ferdinand says, and another sigh mows between dorothea’s lips as she resigns to his passion.

“fine. he…he said something about…about girls ‘like me’ being no-good tramps. i was fuming then, b-but after that he said…he told me he would take it back if i…ugh, i won’t repeat it.” and, despite the agitation that had buckled her brows a second ago, the smallest of smiles flickers at the corners of her lips. “such comments would blow your silly mind, ferdie. i don’t know how you’re so innocent, but i’m sure you couldn’t handle–”

but ferdinand has pounced to his feet. “no! i am sure i can handle whatever this is! and i am not _innocent._ i am ferdinand von aegir, and if i cannot fight for the most beautiful maiden i have ever seen, then i may have to discard my name. it would simply be disgraceful. now tell me.”

“you know, you can be innocent _and_ you can be–” and mockery slams into her tone like a weight, voice digging into her lowest register “– _ferdinand von aegir_. but fine. if you say you can handle it…he told me he’d take it all back if i would…if i would slip beneath his covers and do ‘the only thing girls like me can.’“ 

and the fire that had writhed in her eyes untamed a second ago dissipates like rain, and, even if ferdinand knows presiding over such fire is a challenge he’s barely capable of hoisting upon his shoulders, he would love the challenge to reappear, to burst back to life in a crackle of flames and trouble.

because that’s what dorothea is, when her cheeks aren’t jeweled with tears like diamonds stamped across the walls of a cave, as they are now. she’s flames and trouble, and he loves her more than he knew he could love anyone. and the adoration snaps through his inhibition, and chews it greedily, and laps up any caution that remains until his own chest is a hearth, trampled by vehemence, smoldering in the wake of his need to win dorothea’s justice back. she deserves justice so much more than he deserves her.

“th-that scoundrel! i-i-” but before he can stitch a coherent reply on his tongue, he’s already barreling for the door of the room, whipping it from where it obstructs his blazing path of vengeance.

he imagines his knuckles will be woven with a pattern of cuts and bruises like dorothea’s, but, he reasons, at least they can garden these flowerbeds on their hands, trodden with thorns and bloodstains, side by side.


End file.
